Modern Object Storage

The construct of object storage has come a long way from its early beginnings when computers first became relevant. Back in those days, objects were typically stored in blocks and then stored as a sort of ladder of files. While this was quite efficient in these days, computers were also working with limited amounts of data. Slowly but surely there begun an insurgence of data that pushed the requirements of storage to grow in order to maintain everything.

This constant data and storage expansion quickly became a priority. It became necessary to adopt an easier, more scalable means of computer storage to keep up and evolve with this influx, while providing easy access to the information whenever needed, without requiring the use of some fancy or complicated software.

The Inner Workings

Object storage works by simply separating out the lower storage layers apart from the application layers. This enables the data to be handled more easily as objects, instead of as blocks or files. Typically, each object comes equipped with its own descriptive and administrative information. This cuts out the need for administrators to have to deal with storage management jobs such as utilizing RAID to work with failures, or dividing disks into logical volumes. Metadata can be seen within each object and can be used for several different resolves. One example is its ability to capture administrative or user specific information so indexing methods can be improved upon. In addition, the centralization of control of storage and setting data management policies are both processed so that they are made more convenient.

Standards of Operation in Object Storage

Interoperability is the name of the game in object storage. Therefore, it relies heavily on customarily accepted standards that guarantee access to your data on virtually any computer system. The first object-based storage (OSD-1) standard involves a quantified 64-bit object along with partition IDs. The objects are created and erased within these partitions, and there is no fixed size and size limitations. The OSD interface keeps track of object size and any modifications to said object, as well as reading the policy tags.

The second operational standard known as OSD-2 has extra support for collection objects along with improved methods of handling errors. It is also capable of taking read-only snapshots of all objects located within a partition. Collection objects also contain identifiers of other objects that can be utilized to track and report errors that can be used on higher-level systems in error correction.

Object Storage and Auro.io

Auro utilizes the OpenStack engine that was created to provision and manage great networks of virtual machines, generating a scalable cloud computing platform. It transports APIs, required software, and the control panels that are necessary in running the cloud resources.

Auro operates within an open, elastic cloud computing environment. It offers an easy to use web interface (GUI) or command line interface (CLI) with complete API compatibility that includes communication loyalty with other clouds that allows you operate robust websites and applications with a savings of over half the cost of similar services that allow for fast provisioning times.